Strategic Planning Kit For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Chapter 10

Identifying Your Opportunities and Threats

In This Chapter

• Classifying opportunities for and threats to your operating business
• Capitalizing on opportunities in your operating environment
• Predicting your industry shifts
• Sizing up your competition
• Rounding out your SWOT analysis

You're headed down your strategy road with an SUV that's primed and tuned. It's time to look out the windows and check out what's going on around you. How's the landscape? Is it breathtaking or gray? What's happening with the weather, and how are the road conditions? All these factors influence how smoothly you travel down your path to success.

Assume several storms are brewing on the horizon. Three to be exact. Each storm is a little farther away from the next. The closer the storm, the more potential impact it has on your trip. The ones farthest out may or may not impact you, but you keep an eye on them nevertheless. The landscape your company operates in is exactly the same. Your business has three influences. Starting with the outer ring of Figure 10-1, these influences include

• Your operating environment
• Your industry, which includes your competitors
• Your market

Some external influences or factors have more direct impact on your business. Others just take a little longer to get there. By looking at your landscape in three influences, you won't miss anything that may be hiding on the ...